Hurricane Irene Interactive Update

Some perspectives on the one event that has consumed everyone on the East Coast from CNN: "Hurricane Irene continues to crawl north after making landfall Saturday morning in North Carolina. The storm is expected to head up the East Coast from Virginia to Maine, bringing hurricane-force winds, heavy rain, flooding and widespread power outages. President Barack Obama warned that Irene could be a "hurricane of historic proportions."

[Update 11:01 a.m.] Hurricane Irene is battering eastern North Carolina and tropical storm conditions are spreading northward along the Delmarva coast, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory. The Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of 85 miles per hour and is moving northeast at 15 miles per hour, according to the 11 a.m. ET advisory. It is 50 miles west of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and 120 miles south of Norfolk, Virginia. The center of the storm will move across northeastern North Carolina during the afternoon. The hurricane is forecast to move over the Mid-Atlantic coast on Saturday night and over southern New England on Sunday.

[Update 10:46 a.m.] President Obama added Rhode Island to the list of states under a federal emergency declaration.

[Updated 10:34 a.m.] New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Saturday it's "conceivable" in downtown Manhattan there will be no electricity after Hurricane Irene blows through. He said that mass transit, which will be halted at noon on Saturday because of Hurricane Irene, is not likely to be fully back by Monday morning.

[Updated 10:14 a.m.] North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue said Hurricane Irene "pounded the state all night," but the force isn't as great as originally forecast. She said there are high winds and flooding problems. More than 227,000 homes and businesses have lost power, she said. Irene has affected transportation in the eastern part of the state; 10 major roads have closed and airports have shut down. Perdue also said the eastern counties will see up to 9 inches of rain. "Please stay inside," she said to the people in the storm-affected region of the state.

[Updated 9:36 a.m.] New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg reminded people that mass transit is not going to be available in the city starting at noon. "If you have to leave, you have to start right now," he said.

[Updated 9:33 a.m.] Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Hurricane Irene is now beginning to move up the Atlantic seaboard as expected and "the window of preparation is quickly closing." She urged people in the path of the storm to make sure they have enough supplies for a few days.

[Updated 9:09 a.m.] Several inches of standing water were covering streets and parking lots in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, after the worst of the storm had passed over, CNN's John Zarrella reported.

[Updated 9:07 a.m.] President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in New Hampshire and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local efforts to respond to Hurricane Irene. Earlier, Obama declared emergencies in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

[Updated 8:58 a.m.] North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue said tourists and many residents have left the hurricane-slammed region of her state, but she said "some hangers-on who want to see the storm" remain.

[Updated 8:42 a.m.] A tornado warning is in effect for Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, Virginia, until 9 a.m.

[Updated 8:16 a.m.] Radar showed heavy rain falling throughout eastern North Carolina at a rate of 5 inches or more per hour. Outflow clouds from the hurricane stretched from southern Maine to northeastern Georgia.

[Updated 8 a.m.] The hurricane reached land five miles northeast of Cape Lookout and 60 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. It had maximum sustained winds of 85 mph and was moving 14 mph.

[Updated 7:51 a.m.] Hurricane Irene has made landfall in eastern North Carolina, the National Hurricane Center says in its latest advisory.

Apparently, as he flew over NY, he declared the entire state a disaster area...yesterday!!!...as Hurricane Irene exited the Bahamas...lol...no word yet on if Krugman was consulted first about this newest "broken window fallacy" stimulus scheme.

it seems to me that they are blowing this storm out of proportion - as far as the nyc/nj area. hurricanes and noreasters are nothing new for this area but now for the 1st time they are closing the subway and having large scale mandatory evacuation

i suspect obama is using it as a way to funnel money, unchecked, to his friends in the government - short of that, i can't make sense of it

No offense but what the hell is gold and silver going to do for me today? Those are long-term disaster items. Today you want non-perishable food, water, clean clothes, friends, safety kits and a nice stash of whiskey. I would rather have liquid assets today.

We have gotten our first rain. It has stopped for now. My biggest fear is flooding. Infrastructure damage takes a long time to clean up in this area. Earlier there was plenty of traffic on The Hudson. I even saw a cruise ship come in. Right now the traffic is almost non-existent.

Who told you gold and silver were the answer to all of your problems? If you had piles of cash in your bank account, how does that help you during the storm?

Sure, water, food and shelter are necessary, especially during storms and rough times. Gold and silver are stores of wealth for once those times are over and you would like to maybe buy more food, or gasoline, and repair or improve your "shelter".

Think through the entire situation and maybe you'll fare better Maybe spending some of your food, water and shelter on a survival course or two would help.

right, because anyone with the most rudimentary level of social skills, and enough gold or dollars to buy a ticket, opted out of that value structure a long fucking time ago. Being at the top of a social value pyramid with guns at the apex, in the "African warlord" sense, just means you have a bunch of poor sad stupid people carrying you around a shithole in a rickshaw. You still live in a shithole, and you still only see, smell, and taste shit wherever you go

A wage slave in the US has a life that a fuedal king would have traded his crown for in a heartbeat. Are you seriously suggesting that you would find it preferable to give up your modern conveniences simply to have the ability to control others?

But how many billions will die of hunger if the peak oil folks are correct, and we do not have a working power substitute? Even though bad things can and do happen, nuclear power is still not a bad option- you're far more likely to die in a car accident than from radiation, but no one is seriously considering senselessly demonizing and banning cars (yet.)

I know it's cold, but an actuarial decision is needed here. The potential loss of millions does not outweigh the potential loss of billions. And even in the worst estimates I've seen, millions have not been killed by radiation. I will admit, the photos from Chernobyl are gruesome, and regrettable, but bad things happen, and we will never stop all of them.

It doesn't matter. Even if there's unlimited free energy, there's a limit to the amount of food that can be produced. If population continues to grow, some day that amount of food won't be adequate and there will be starvation. All organisms, if allowed to propagate unchecked, will eventually be limited by their finite food supply.

Nuclear power and fossil fuels are both the means that TPTB use to control the proletariat. Peak oil is Power Elite propaganda. If you want lots of oil, drill a 7 mile deep hole in the Gulf of Mexico. You'll get more than you bargained for.

but we send half of that to feed cows and fund our meat habit...then we throw away a shit load...then we waste a shit load..and the food is concentrated in certain places...then we use some to create biofuel....

dont believe all the myths...and its not the power I am worried about...we can get power from coal and solar if we really wanted to...

im more concerned with the loss of plastics...medicines...gels....rubber....condoms....the lot like...

Sadly, it looks like a false alarm that will just discredit the governments more as whining pussies, who even with less to handle than they expected, probably won't handle it that well. Just a hell of a lot of rain by the time it gets to the northern states. Down in VA, we're both ready for much worse (have had practice too), and also not so whiny.

No one goes to ground zero at Fuk, and no one ever denied it's bad there -- it's everywhere else that matters. Due to the local population being wiped out by natural causes, there's not much demand to be there just now, and before the crap went down, only the power plant workers were allowed to go there...and before the crap, just feet away from "ground zero" it was far hotter than that inside the containment vessels, duh -- and no one felt the need to "go there" either. While some leakage ongoing is inevitable, the stuff doesn't just jump into the sky and spread itself all over you know. Radiocativity doesn't replicate like a disease. It takes neutrons to "activate" other substances, and those are absent when fission isn't going on. All this radiation is your usual alpha, beta, gamma -- bad for you if too much, but doesn't make other stuff hot.

Funny how none of the whiners had anything to say BEFORE the problems -- they like those lights coming on at the flip of a switch and don't realize the "them" who create all the pollution by paying to have it done for them, are, well, themselves. And now climbing on the backs of a bunch of dead people to push an agenda, well, that's pretty sick in my book. Did you forget how many people died there, with nothing whatever to do with the reactor? Do you even care? Do you care they put the reactor there because the po' folk didn't have the means to object in a massive NIMBY? Nah, you're just an attention whore using tradgey to have something to talk about, being unable to think of anything yourself that deserves attention. Sick.

Napolitano is on the case so expect some new emergency legislation that allows no knock FEMA home inspections for the next twenty years along the entire path of Irene, +/- 300 miles either side. Remember, if you didn't do anything wrong you shouldn't have anything to object too! It's for your own good!

And the evacuations are so they can catch you illegally transporting your firearms over state lines, but gun-afficionado Rick Perry is a Bilderberger, but is against the EPA regulating greenhouse gases, but still part of the front for the global warming scam, because humans can't affect the climate, but HAARP can cause earthquakes.

Would we get the same damage assessment from NC if they had subways and a highly packed metro area? At least on the Outer Banks they build on stilts. Last I checked none of those buildings in the Financial District or Midtown are built on stilts.

Financial District? Sorry. We lost that long ago. Can't lose what we do not have. Let's not forget that some big bank have HQs in Mel Watt's little gerrymanderd sliver (or in DE).

As for the rest. Avoid the subway and first floors for a while. Maybe y'all can use this excess liquidity to fill The Bathtub and finally put it to good use a swimming pool. Your biggest problem might not be the amount of water, but that it is nasty, Hudson River water, and it's many organisms which have yet to be identified.

Algos and bots drove up stocks yesterday as everyone checked out before the storm.

Ben didn't give any qe and the spin is he might next month, so between then and now watch the stock market crash. A run to Dow 12k will not help matters to print a trillion dollars for wall st while the rest of the country suffers.

More political spotlights are on ben then ever before. So no lsap will go over easy without a huge dip or crash.

But Obama is going to crank up his big Vote Buying Machine on September 6th. That should fix everything. The man is a clueless menace. It is amazing that people that try to label him haven't figured out he can't be labelled. He just tries to buy off everybody, whether the cause is socialist, Marxist, capitalist or vegan. His only goal is power and he loves to do that with other people's money.

higher stock prices buys more time. if we rally hard enough credit will be forced to follow which will give the banks a window to dump $5bn of CMBS on to the market

and expect some capital raises in the financials following old country buffet's sweetheart deal. barron's andrew barry, who's job is to put out pump up pieces on the banks, is humping bank preferreds this weekend.

Category 1 weakish Hurricane was already priced into Friday's rise. GDP numbers and Michigan were weaker than estimated and no QE3 imminently downward pressures were cancelled out by the weakening weather forecasts and the bullish sentiment of Bernanke.

They need the market to decline substantially to hearld in QE3. They also need the Dollar Index to rise to near the 88 QE and QE2 announcement levels to really justify it.

Doing it at 75, where it seems trapped under at the moment, risks massive inflation, civil unrest and riots. The Hamptons would have more than just hurricanes to be afraid of, my heart bleeds....

Tyler, if you are out there, there is a big question I have had. Everybody talks about the next move by Bernanke and Obama to slip a bunch of shoddy mortgages to Fannie and Freddie and refinance them at ultra-low rates. Will anybody address what impact this will have on the banking industry? How will the banks, not the mega banks, but regular banks? How is there any chance that core banking will be profitable with these artificially low rates? Anybody?

It seems the unintended consequences are going to be huge from this madness.

this hurricane is really one of the MOST signficiant socio-behavioral events this year. instead of london riots or looting or whatever other stuff, mother nature courtesy of irene, is providing the world an opportunity to see how mass psychology of an entire city of people interacts with private business and with government.---and this is not just any of the 300 global mega cities, it's the one with the largest stock exchange and the biggest financial center backed directly by u.s. military power. and it's,......NEW YORK. start ...spreading....the news. we are panicing today.....i want to be a part of it, new york new york!!!!

people are definitley buying and consuming as much as possible, hoarding and panicing. some people stay , some people 'evaccuate' as government requires. bloomberg is paying it cool and offering not to arrest, or even fine, anyone but demanding they do as he says.

the mta is shutting down. everything else is shutting down AND THERE ISNT EVEN A GODAMN HURRICANE HERE YET. this is 'forecasting' . we are going to get rain but there is still a less than 50% chance this hurricane will produce winds above 50 miles per hour in new york. it could very well just turn into a bad storm which means the only real guaranteed risk from this thing is flooding. con-ed says that they are shutting down electricity to prevent damage. i don't even know that i would trust con-edison in a situation like this. what if they use the storm to make a lot of changes which in fact have nothing to do with the storm.

if there are truly wide spread blackouts after this storm, because of floods, who has ever heard of mass electrical problems from flood--i'm 30 in new york and i've never heard of that anywher????? from gale force wind destroying things ok, from flood? what is this shit?

anyways.......it's just odd living with 10million people. the hurricane is not in any way unusual, what is odd is 10 million people reacting to a government announced state of emergency. watch carefully and gain insight into how government and the masses will react to future human generated states of emergency.

people are already freaked out by the earthquake, bloody august in the market, wall street lay offs, steve jobs stepping down, warren buffet crony capitalism with BofA, and wag the dog style coverage of lybia

the only thing that hasn't happened this week are UFOs. but scientists did discover a diamond planet

I see low level panic here in central Massachusetts. There are hordes of idiots at the supermarkets buying oceans of bottled water. But all the towns around here have municipal water systems. These morons could theoretically be every single person whose home is served by a well in the surrounding towns. More likely, fricking idiots don't realize that when/if power goes out there will still be cold water available from their tap. Maybe all these nitwits think there are electric pumps involved somehow. I don't know. But it's pathetic.

Hurricanes, especially if accompanied by a tidal surge or flooding, can contaminate the public water supply. Drinking contaminated water may cause illness. You cannot assume that the water in the hurricane-affected area is safe to drink.

In the area hit by a hurricane, water treatment plants may not be operating; even if they are, storm damage and flooding can contaminate water lines. Listen for public announcements about the safety of the municipal water supply.

If your well has been flooded, it needs to be tested and disinfected after the storm passes and the floodwaters recede. Click here for information on well disinfection and here for a list of certified environmental laboratories.

Actually in NYC there is a substantial risk to electrical systems due to flood. Your power grid is underground, and your city is built a scant few feet above sea level. If the storm surge raises the sea level 4 to 8 feet, the majority of your underground system (which is where the electrical grid is located) will be under water. Salt water at that. Salt water + copper wire = failure.

"bloomberg is paying it cool and offering not to arrest, or even fine, anyone but demanding they do as he says. the mta is shutting down. everything else is shutting down AND THERE ISNT EVEN A GODAMN HURRICANE HERE YET. this is 'forecasting' . we are going to get rain but there is still a less than 50% chance this hurricane will produce winds above 50 miles per hour in new york."

Mike Bloomberg's company, Bloomberg News, regularly features stories promoting global warming alarmism. So maybe he's a "warmist" and has bought into the warmists' "Weather Weirding" theme. If Irene really fizzles when it reaches NYC he'll look a bit over-anxious. Although Bloomberg News will find lots of power outages around NYC to play up, to soften the impact.

The hurricane over hype is ridiculous. Realize it's a bad storm but a cat. 1 is "hurricane of historic proportions" (Obama)? Please.

Sure, it will bring some damage; and some power will go out and a bit of flooding. But, it won't be a Katrina. And probably won't bring as much death as a winter storm.

Funny how the media are doing two things: 1) milking this for all they can to up their ratings (TWC has had a huge jump in advertiser pricing); and 2) setting it up as an excuse for the economy not jump starting the next year - even though the economy is already going nowhere.

Key cog in the Obama campaign next year: "We had to face a devastating Japanese Earthquake and Hurricane Irene. And, that's why the recovery has been slowed ... yada, yada, yada ..."

I enjoyed that snowstorm last year where streets were't cleared for two weeks and trash sat around for 10 days. That was fun. Some preparation there might have come in handy.

If you prepare and nothing happens you are an alarmist. If you don't prepare and the shit hits the fan you are a fool. I say it is better to prepare, but not panic, and deal with the effects of humiliation if nothing happens.

Shit, they need to zap this thing with HAARP so we can really have some fun!! :-P

I'm in Norfolk, and so far it's just been moderate rain and 20-30 mph sustained winds (gusts probably around 40). We get worse things out of some of the regular thunderstorms that roll through occasionally.

Why is it that we have no Hurricane Defense Fund? We have won the cold war, gone to the moon, rebuild every country we invade, yet we do not spend money to make sure that we have an extreme level of readiness for these events and why aren't we researching ways to reduce the intensity of the storms. We spend billions fighting enemies we do not know, how about the ones we know.

But ones intelligence level plays a big part of what is 'unexpected'. We're talking about the forrest gump media. EVERYTHING is UNEXPECTED. Except what they tell you, which they are SURE about.

'initial expectations' were wrong. Because they were never based on facts. But by idiots who are trying to sell you into watching their program.

There was a time this could have been bigger. But it's been quite clear for more than 24 hours this was just going to be a big storm for the north east, and low grade hurricane for the carolinas.

This is absolutely nothing compared to Katrina.

'epic proportions' my ass

'storm of a lifetime' my ass

You can still get killed in any storm. But overall it's pretty mild for hurricanes. If someone is on lifesupport and loses power, yeah it can kill them. Car accidents? Sure. Surfing? Sure. Limbs falling down on you? Already happened. But other than things like this, it will just be a decent cleanup.

This is total overreaction. It's still probably going to bring some flooding to NY, but nothing that hasn't happened before. I won't be surprised if some subways flood. Nothing new.

This is not a Katrina, Andrew, Hugo...stay safe..but don't overreact people. Unusual? Sure. Storm of the Century? Hell no.

This is looking like an overhyped event for NorthEastern politicians to hyperventilate over. This was a CAT 2 on landfall, and is now just a CAT 1, soon to be tropical storm.

Ray Nagin, former mayor of NOLA during CAT 5 Katrina, was actually a guest on a MSM program giving advice on what to do. Curiously, he did not recommend Bloomberg herd everybody into low lying areas and into Madison Square Garden and Yankee standium 12 hours before it hits.

WAY overblown by a media hoping for another Katrina so they can get more to worship at the altar of global warming. I'm sure FEMA is actually prepared this time to show the nation how wonderful big gov't can be.

Gee, too bad the government doesn't give a shit about anything except how the rain might spoil their golf or picnics. A minor weather event and these properly paranoid politicians peddle pizzle predicting profound problems.

They dance and sing and make noises from every hole if it might affect them or their money flow. There wasn't this much hype for Kartrina. One would have to guess the infrastructure is far worse off than we might have been led to believe because there aren't any other viable reasons for the hype.

We had a disaster that affected most of our state a while back. I don't remember anyone in the US government saying anything but, "this is just terrible", "give me the 5 iron".

Thing is, everyone bitches if you look like you are not doing enough. Bush took a huge hit for Katrina, and the response was inept. New York is top shelf shit. Obama does not want to take the chance that he will be seen as non-responsive.

I don't love either guy, don't get me wrong, but I can't imagine dealing with people thinking that I am responsible for calling the response to the incoming weather correctly. I think I would "over prepare." And you would mock me (my family does, and then I'm usually right). Regarding this storm, I would probably be wrong. But being wrong the other way... holy shit.

I am happy to criticize Obama. He is a sell out whore disaster puppet. The vibe he got elected on and chose to betray shows a sociopathic personality (maybe just narcissistic). I couldn't promise you all that and not work my ass off to try and make it happen. He just didn't care, say what you need to say to get elected and fuck it.

BUT, if I am going to give a guy shit, I need to know I am not just petty and grumbling. There is plenty this guy is doing wrong to go after. Preparing for the possibility that this storm does a great deal of damage is not one of them.

While the storm may peter out before it does major damage, what you're saying is very true. Down in New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin evacuated the city for a hurricane that hit a year or 2 before Katrina. That hurricane turned out to be a non-event and people got pissed that he disrupted the entire city for basically nothing. Then you fast forward to 2005 when Katrina was bearing down and there was no evacuation because of the fallout from the earlier non-event. Well, I bet they wish they had evacuated for that one.